Thirty-tree mobile teams have been formed to confront with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in Ho Chi Minh City, amid fears of a possible spread, the municipal health department said Friday. Health authorities in Ho Chi Minh City are worried that the deadly disease could penetrate into Vietnam and the city in particular via visitors from epidemic-affected areas, the department told Health Minister Nguyen Thi Kim Tuyen at a meeting the same day. Minister Tuyen visited the city yesterday to examine measures to cope with MERS, which has spread to 26 countries, affecting more than 1,300 people and killing more than 450 of them as of Thursday. These mobile teams have been assigned to a number of hospitals and preventive health centers in 24 districts of the city, the health department said. It also reported that 88 isolated beds have been arranged in three hospitals assigned to treat possible MERS patients. These clinics include the Hospital for Tropical Diseases and the Pediatrics Hospital 1 and Pediatrics Hospital 2. All equipment, medical supplies, and other items necessary for treatment of MERS have been made available at these hospitals. the department said. Minister Tien warned that Ho Chi Minh is highly vulnerable to MERS infection, as the city receives about 1,800 visitors from South Korea on a daily basis, where the epidemic has been raging since May 20. She also noted that China and Thailand have recently reported their first cases of MERS, which is caused by the Corona virus. The minister also arrived at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases and the Tan Son Nhat International Airport to inspect their activities to prevent and detect MERS. The epidemic has so far killed 24 people and sickened more than 160 people in South Korea, the biggest outbreak outside Saudi Arabia where it was first appeared in 2012, AP reported on Friday. However, the number of patients isolated at home and in medical facilities dropped from about 6,700 on Thursday to more than 5,900 on Friday, with more than 5,500 people so far released from the quarantine, AP cited the South Korean Health Ministry as saying. Dr. Tran Dac Phu, head of the Vietnamese health ministry’s Health Preventive Department, noted that the incubation period of the disease is from two to 14 days, during which infected people will show no signs of infection. The disease transmits from ill people to others through close contact and has a mortality rate as high as 40 percent, Dr. Phu warned. Vietnam's health authorities have requested that all border gates, including the international airports in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, tighten medical quarantine procedures to detect signs of the disease from international visitors, especially those from MERS hit areas. So far, Vietnam has had a dozens of suspected MERS cases, tests on which have all proven negative, the ministry said.